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WIYN Status - Semester 2020A Proposer Information

NOAO Time on WIYN in Semester 2020A

NOAO will continue to offer access to WIYN and its instruments to the national community in 2020A, albeit with a focus on research programs that are related to exoplanets. Interested observers should consult the NOAO WIYN 2020A Observing Proposal Call for details. This does not apply to people applying for time through WIYN's university partners.

Instrument availability in 2020A

There are several key things to note about the availability of 3.5-m instruments in 2020A:

NEID: A new, cutting edge, high-precision spectrograph designed for radial velocity measurements of exoplanet host stars will be available on WIYN in 2020A. NEID is designed with a goal of achieving 27 cm/s precision per data point, providing the US exoplanet community with high-precision radial velocity measurements appropriate for studying Earth and super-Earth mass planets orbiting bright host stars over a wide range of spectral type. Other investigations that hinge on extreme RV precision can also make good use of NEID. NOAO will operate NEID in a queue scheduled mode and NExScI will employ pipeline data reductions on all observations to provide PIs with high-level data products, including high-precision radial velocities. Further information about NEID, including how to propose for time, can be found within the NEID web pages. NEID is expected to be available in shared-risk mode February through April and available for regular use May through July.

ODI: WIYN has procured four full-sized narrow-band filters for use by observers; NB422, NB695 (red-shifted H-alpha), NB746 (red-shifted H-alpha), and an H-alpha filter. We will no longer be supporting the use of Mosaic filters with ODI in 2020A.
Additionally, flat-fielding is now done as a service to observers by observatory staff. Contact Wilson Liu for more information.

All other WIYN instruments besides ODI share the second Nasmyth port, known as the Hydra port. Thus, (the IFUs)+WHIRC, WHIRC+Visitor Instruments, and Hydra will be block scheduled. The switch between Hydra and the Instrument Adapter System (IAS) that supports the WIYN High-Resolution Infrared Camera (WHIRC), SparsePak, Hexpak, Gradpak, NESSI, and visitor instruments takes two to four days to complete. Normally there is one change from Hydra to the IAS and another switch back to Hydra each semester.

The two new unique IFUs, HexPak and GradPak, will continue to be offered for shared-risk observing in 2020A. These IFUs are distinguished by having different sized fibers in the same head to optimize the balance between surface brightness and signal-to-noise for various classes of extended objects. They were developed by Matt Bershady's group in Washburn Astronomical Laboratories at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. As they are still PI-level, rather than facility, instruments, it is necessary to work with the PI before submitting a proposal to use the new IFUs. Please read the introduction letters from the WIYN director and the instrument PI. More information and instructions on how to proceed can be found on the Hexpak and Gradpak web pages. SparsePak will continue to be offered as a facility instrument.

WHIRC will continue to be offered. See the WHIRC Hot News for the latest updates.

The queue-operated speckle imager NESSI (NN-Explore Exoplanet Stellar Speckle Imager) will be offered again this semester.

Remote Observing

Remote observing at WIYN is available to all qualified observers (see the remote observing policies). Those wishing to observe remotely with ODI must do so from a pre-approved (and tested) workstation. More information can be found on the WIYN Remote Observing page.